He gives his goofy grin that he does when he’s simultaneously embarrassed and happy and pleased with what we’ve said.

"Are you proud of yourself? Does it feel good?"

"I don’t know."

"What do you mean you don’t know? You played really well. Are you proud of that?"

"I don’t know.”

I realize he’s using ‘I don’t know’ to combat the contradictory feelings inside, hearing praise while feeling a failure. But I don’t know what he feels a failure about. I'm confused.

"Do you think you didn’t do well?"

"I don’t know."

"Buddy, what do you think you could have done better? What wasn’t good enough?"

"I didn’t catch those balls.”

It took me a minute. Then, oh. That.

Sigh. I know this pain: the pain of the perfectionist. Because even excellence isn’t good enough.

He played shortstop last night. He made some awesome plays. The crowd cheered for him by name. He struck out once, but hit his other times at bat. He played great! There were a few hard hit balls right at him that he tried to stop, even came in contact with, but got past him. It happened to other kids on the field, too. It’s the end of the season, and just as my friend Dana predicted, the kids have figured it out and can really clobber the balls now when they bat.

I’m no athlete. We never played sports at all growing up. I don’t know the rules and I don’t know the skills. I also don't know the mentality. I’m learning alongside him. But what I do know is that this is part of sports. You try your best but sometimes the ball gets by. Sometimes you miss. Sometimes you strike out. Most times you don’t. But sometimes you do. And that’s okay.

But it’s not okay. To him. And I understand.

It doesn’t matter that he made some awesome hits at bat. It doesn’t matter that he got several people out by his moves on defense as short stop. It doesn’t matter that he made snap decisions and threw the ball to the right spot at the right time and it got there. It doesn’t even matter that he’s getting to play short stop, when this is his first time to play baseball ever. All that matters is that he let some balls get by. He messed up. And those few mess ups completely negate all the things he DID do right.

My mother heart aches at this. How can he not see what he did well? How can he be displeased at himself? Especially when we are so happy with him? How can I rejoice as he rejoices when he does play well, but not feed into the philosophy that he only counts when he achieves? How can I make our words that it doesn’t matter how well he does ring true, when we go bananas when things go right, and we emphasize that it takes a lot of practice to do things well? How can I make it make sense to a seven year old perfectionist that we really, truly ARE just as proud of him if he plays well as if he strikes out every time, doesn’t catch a ball, and make true errors of judgement? Because what counts to us is that he goes out and gives it his all every time, no matter what. But how do I make our words and actions align to prove that to him?

While my mother heart aches, my perfectionist heart resonates. I know just how he feels, for I feel the same thing every single day. It’s hard to enjoy a meal I prepared, knowing the mistakes I made or things I COULD have done better. It’s hard to walk through a house that isn’t perfect, knowing that if I tried a little harder, maybe just maybe, I could make it neater. It’s hard to photograph, feeling that even if I like an image there are twenty things I could do better. I often don’t see the joy or the beauty - I see the mistakes. I see the places where the composition is weak, or I chopped body parts, or I didn’t nail focus, or most often, just isn’t the vision I saw in my head when I set out to capture the image.

I’ve heard it said that expectations are premeditated disappointments. How TRUE.

Disappointment is a few fine grains of sand away from a loss of hope. And the loss of hope is a very, very dangerous place. Hope is essential. Vital. But the continuous build up of disappointments always sends me down this path of losing hope. I cling to the walls, hoping not to submerge and succumb to it.

I learned that it was easier, less potential for a feeling of hopelessness, to simply hedge off the disappointment by not allowing myself to have expectations. If I didn’t set an expectation, allow for the hope of success, then I wouldn’t feel the disappointment at the lack of success, and couldn’t lose hope. You can’t lose what you don’t have. So I felt that expectations were bad things. Evil things. To be avoided. Eliminated from my life. In all aspects and facets.

What I didn’t realize was that in taking away the potential for disappointment, I thus by default also took away the potential for pleasure. Brene Brown wisely says "“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.” Removing the expectation of success meant I also never get to feel the joy of succeeding. I thought that if I just removed the expectations, I could feel surprised joy when I did well. But what I found was, the joy wasn’t the same joy that existed when I allowed myself to feel the full gamut of human emotion.

So, how do I apply this realization to my parenting, to guiding and raising my mini-mi perfectionist 7 year old son? Telling him not to focus on the faults is ridiculous. It’s as effective as telling a two year old who’s been stung not to be afraid of a bee. You can’t just TELL a child something and expect that to change the behavior or mentality. You can’t just tell them to get over it. This is temperament, personality, birth order. It is who they are. We cannot be slaves to it. We cannot use it as an excuse. But we need to face it head on with honesty.

We can accept the places we erred, we can use that to fuel our practice, motivate us to do better in the future. But we cannot let it paralyze it, and usurp the place of joy in our lives.

“Buddy, do you feel like you can tell me anything?”

He nods.

“Buddy, Momma is a safe place. You can always, always tell me anything. Any of your thoughts, your feelings, your frustrations. You always share those with me, okay, Buddy?”

That’s all I know to do for now. To tell him that I’m sorry he missed those balls. I know he’s disappointed in himself. That I know I would be disappointed, too. Affirm his feelings, so he’s not double dipping in that pool of self condemnation for being a failure and then for FEELING that way in the first place, that something is wrong with him for feeling what he does. Tell him that I know he was trying as hard as he could, and that’s all we ever ask of him. And that I’m so pleased with the things he did do well. So much so, I didn’t even remember those balls that got by.

"Only miracle is plain; it is the ordinary that groans with the unutterable weight of glory."-Robert Farrar Capon

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,Prone to leave the God I love;Here's my heart,O take and seal it;Seal it for Thy courts above.

I'm a sensitive introvert who finds such beauty in the ordinary, everyday moments in life. I seek light. I'm mesmerized by it. I photograph and share my images in the hopes that you can also be blessed by the beauty I find around me.

I could not be more proud of this kiddo. He spent his day working on google classroom assignments for the snow day, then piano practice, then I told him I was going to shovel the driveway. He joined me. We worked together for a long, long time. He never complained. He didn’t complain that I had the better shovel. He didn’t complain that it was tiresome and boring work. He didn’t complain that his sister wasn’t helping. He didn’t complain when he realized that having a long driveway means it takes a looooooong time to make progress against 14” of snow. He didn’t complain that he hadn’t had a chance to play in the snow yet today. He was in it for the long haul. When I told him to go to the house and tell his sister she needed to unload the dishwasher, he came back with two water bottles for us to drink. (He did complain thAt I made him wear gloves so he wouldn’t get blisters bc ain’t nobody got time for that for basketball games or piano recitals on Sunday!). I have no idea how long we had been at it when Shawn got home from work. He jumped in and we three worked for a while until I realized I wanted a picture to remember this and bailed. I’m so proud of the work ethic of this kid and his character in the midst of it.

Antics.

Light up the night 5k for the second year. The Boy got 2nd in his 10-14 age group. His was around 23:50. The Lady decided yesterday morning that she’d run it, too. So we did. I forgot to take a picture of us before the race though. Or at the race. So in the car while we waited for daddy in a parking lot it is. But I wanted to remember this race we ran together. I told her I wasn’t going to push her. We haven’t been running this fall once the cross country team failed to materialize, so she hasn’t trained at all. I wasn’t going to fight her the whole run. She ran the whole thing pushing ME! She didn’t complain once. She rocked it. even though she didn’t get an age group award I couldn’t be more proud that she chose to go out and do this Instead of sitting and watching. I think her time was around 32:40 which is about 1 min slower than her time last year. Not bad for not training.

We got home from the MS basketball game and I jumped into finishing laundry. I came out to find this scene of homework with The Lady. Then I walked back to check on The Boy and found the same scene. Exactly. We miss the sun.

Last weekend we found ourselves a giant tree.

We weren’t allowed to have cameras or phones out during our horseback riding. (Do you know how much that killed me???) but the super awesome guide dude who started out just in front of The Lady grabbed several shots of the four of us along the way. I was soooooooo thankful!

The whole morning was ‘off.’ I slept too late. I took the dogs out too late. I had to wait forever for the puppy to poop. I woke the kids late. I got The Lady in the shower late. I started cooking breakfast late. They started eating breakfast late. Then I spent their entire breakfast time looking for the cup of coffee that I’d poured before putting The Lady in the shower. I couldn’t find it anywhere.

The whole time I didn't know what to say. The whole time I didn't know whether this was happening for HER or for ME. Was I supposed to DO something with this? Or was I just supposed to be there, to be a calm presence, to listen? Was God trying to speak to my own heart through her words and her wounds? I felt almost panicked, not having time to think through all the options and what the one very right thing to do could be. I wish I could say I chose out of wisdom, but that's not true. I chose out of exasperation. I just tried to listen. To affirm her. To tell her I was sorry. So very sorry that it happened to her and she'd had to live through that.

I saw it the moment she walked in the door that Friday evening. Something was wrong. Not her normal 'I didn't get my way' kind of wrong but a deep, consequential wrong. In a millisecond I had time to think a thousand year's worth of thoughts.